Overexposed SEAL Team 6 Has Been 'Likely Benched,' Says An Insider

The media firestorm SEAL Team 6 has been riding has finally come back to bite them.

Since taking responsibility for the killing of Somali pirates in a daring rescue, to the now famous Osama bin Laden raid, SEAL Team 6 has been in a hurricane of media attention. Movies, books, news coverage in tidal waves have brought the once somewhat-secret unit to the forefront of public discourse.

Most notorious is the no-longer-anonymous account by SEAL Matt Bissonnette, titled No Easy Day.

And now the backlash.

The UK's Daily Mail is reporting that the Navy even "benched" many members of the command, as well as, in all likelihood, SEAL Team 6 operators. It's not exactly clear why the members have been benched—there have been no official statements—but common sense and conjecture from insiders point at a few reasons.

Brandon Webb, a former top level operator with the SEALs, published an ebook titled, "No Easy Op", offering an analysis of Matt Bissonnette's controversial book.

From Webb's book:

"We are already aware of several operators at SEAL Team Six who have been pulled from regular deployment cycles in order to deal with the aftermath of No Easy Day. They are just sitting there on the bench. This will affect the way that the SEALs plan operations. In our opinion the whole command will be on the bench as well because the consequences of this are so serious."

Though Webb does say publishing "No Easy Day" might not have been the best publicity, or operational, move, he concludes:

"Just as Admiral McRaven is smart enough to know what to share and what to protect, [Bissonnette] is equally careful in No Easy Day not to allow innocuous facts to be compiled to potentially compromise sensitive national security information. Instead, he captures the essence of what it is like to live your life as a protector of the freedoms all of us hold so dear."

Nonetheless, other operators have noted that Bissonnette is likely to be blacklisted by his fellow SEALs for publishing the book.